February 2009 Newsletter

Next Meeting February 21, 2009
10 AM - 4 PM (more or less)
Email goes to: spinner@serendipityspinners.org

January in a Nutshell

by Sue Toorans

Was the last meeting really in January? The weather was nice enough for it to have been April or May. Since it was a mystery batt month, we needed to meet indoors. Some of us did escape outside to enjoy the sun during lunch.

January is our mystery batt meeting. We'll continue on this project in February. Please bring drum carders and fiber, again. Lisa obliged us with a short history of the mystery batt.

History of Mystery Batts: At an event called Fluff N Stuff, Jenny bought batts made from leftovers from a commercial carder. We started making our own from pooled fibers. We use to make batts for ourselves but a few years ago, Spindles and Flyers handed off running the CD spindle demo event at Stitches West. Now we make batts for our booth at Stitches. All told, we've been doing this for 15 years or more. Even though there is no longer any mystery about what is going into the batts, the name lingers on.

Margaret brought the leftover unused wool from last year. Ginger brought our wool from our dye day. Lotus brought in a TON of colorful wool that she had purpose dyed.

	Sharolene with the wool from our dye day and the left over wool from last year's demo.		Lotus and all the wool she dyed.		Lisa and Ginger hard at work.
	Sharolen carding.		Kelsey, Jocelyn, and Nancy carding.

New Business

Dues are due! Makes checks payable to Serendipity Spinners.

Treasurer's Report

Bank says $1,120.62 but we still owe a check to Heifer Int'l ($200). We paid Lotus for the fleece she used for mystery batt supplies; $61.15 rounded up to $100 to also cover dye and electricity.

Old Business

The quilt still has not made it to our raffle winner, Marge, who moved to Arizona. Nancy will contact Marge and see if we should re-raffle it or ship it to her.

Jocelyn reports that the roster for our booth at Stitches is full. Please verify your contact information with her.

Show 'n Tell

Lotus: showed one ball of mystery batt yarn done over a long time plus 2 done during a full showing of Lord of the Rings (all 12 hours of it). She showed a little Cook Book Chicken critter related to Fiber Artisans project and a bag that had been dolled up with straps.

She bought an Orchard Supply electric turkey fryer (yes, aluminum) for $116 including tax. It worked nicely. She suggests only using synthetic dyes. The 28 quart fryer is easy to use. It even has a drain and a timer that beeps when done. It can be set to temperatures in 25 degree increments. She highly recommends it as a dye pot.

	Mystery batt yarn.		Cook Book Chicken
	Bag from Inkle straps and handwoven cloth scraps		A very wide Inkle straps

Nancy D: is knitting another dog sweater for her granddog, Sarah. She is trying to become interested in dogs since she now has granddogs. She has leftover cane from her chair project. Sue volunteered to try caning baskets with it.

Dog sweater.

Sharolene: brought her pink almost finished lace shawl. She brought piece of felt from a felting day at Lotus' last summer. She also showed a purse made from a second piece of felt and a coiled basket made from fabric over clothesline cord. It is made by cutting long, one inch strips of fabric (on the grain), folding them over the cord and zig-zagging them by machine into a coiled basket.

	Pink lace Shawl.		Felt from felting day this summer at Lotus's home.
	Felted handbag from felting day this summer at Lotus's home.		Coiled bowl.

Ginger: had nothing with her.

Sage: has no time to spin (she's attending UCSC with a major in applied physics) but she is still knitting. She showed a project with bright duplicate stitch flame and a knitted lacey top.

	The sleeve to the sweater with the bright duplicate switch flame.		Knitt and Felt bag
	The sleeve to a knitted lacey top		The front to a knitted lacey top

Sue: Showed off a chain mail trivet and a new blue and black beaded box. There is some question how well the trivet will work. It is aluminum.

	Chain mail trivet		Beaded box
	Beaded box

Frank: Did another knit and felt bag as part of the Fiber Artisans gift exchange. The bag is huge since it has not yet been felted.

Knit and felt bag that hasn't been felted yet.

Lisa: has moved out Oregon. They had a foot of snow when she left for the meeting. Her truck now is equipped for show and Lisa says her snow driving skill is improving.

Chris S: showed hand painted yarns. Some were in the blues-and -greens family. Some were pink-purple flower colors. She dyed some bamboo vivid blues, turquoise, and purple.

Bamboo yarn from dye day with Kimberly.

Kimberly : had a dye day. She showed the tussah silk she had dyed green.

	Silk from dye day with Chris S.		Wash cloth.
	Beginnings of a bottle cap trivet. Based on a design her grandmother used.

Margaret: is knitting a Fair Isle sweater from kit.

Front

Back

Aviva: was at the symphony the previous night and so didn't pack any show 'n tell. Her current project is a sweater on size 9 needles (she usually uses size 3). Sage and Aviva had gone on Lord of the Rings tour of New Zealand. They visited the place that made the cloaks all the actors wore in the movie. They are woven on 8 harness looms. The breeder had worked to breed the Gottland sheep back to their earlier single coated form. (The Danish had bred Gottlands to be double coated).

Sweater on size 9 needles.

Detail of front panel.

Ginny: is new to area, from Minnesota. She's been in the area five months. Welcome!

Knit bag

Jocelyn: : brought her daughter, Kelsey, who is learning to She showed off a scarf that alternates light and dark. Both yarns are variegated so the scarf is visually complex.

Jocelyn and Kelsey

Scarf

And that's January in a nutshell.

If you have news or pictures of interest to the group please send it to spinner@serendipityspinners.org